So this may sound crazy to you guys, but I'm wondering if any of you other pumpers out there experience this:
Sometimes when I change my site, even if it is on the opposite side of my body as my last site (it always is) I have this phantom burn sometimes as if insulin has somehow travelled to my old side and leaked out...The same burn feeling I get if its a new site and your skin is getting used to the catheter.
Anyone experience this or am I just weird?
Hi Kim,
No you are not weird. I have experienced this many times. This just happened to me the last time I changed my site. Right afterward I was doing the dishes and my site was burning. I turned off the water, took of my gloves and went to touch my site, and it was the old one. Sometimes I am dead sure that it is on one side and then when I look it is really on the other. Strange stuff, but you are certainty not alone in the feeling.
Wow! That has never happened to me! Sounds cool and mysterious at the same time LOL
I wonder why? Sometimes I think that for whatever reason the body recognizes where the insulin used to come from and kind of tries to travel that same path even though the new site is, for instance, on the right side of my naval instead of the left. I guess just some weird uneducated explanation I gave myself so I wouldn't freak out, lol.
For me, I have just always thought that it was because it was stuck there for three days and I am just now getting use to a new one. So yeah, I guess I use a non scientific explanation too :)
I always related the phantom burn you talked about just to the fact that my site has been pulled out and I am not always that graceful and polite when I remove it at 6:00 in the morning. That could just be the fact that I am not awake yet too.
I always have phantom burn. My skin is really, really sensitive so it seems like I can still feel the pump site even after it's been replaced somewhere else.
[quote user="Brian"]
I always related the phantom burn you talked about just to the fact that my site has been pulled out and I am not always that graceful and polite when I remove it at 6:00 in the morning. That could just be the fact that I am not awake yet too.
[/quote]
There is a way to pull the site out gracefully?
I do kind of just rip it off now that I think about it. I will give it a try Monday.
Gracefully may have not been the right word. Maybe more along the lines of delicately. I tend to just pretend it is a band aid and happily remove it. I get a strange feeling that my skin does not like that. SInce it does not like it, it tends to get all red and grumpy. Granted at 6:00 in the morning I can't blame my skin, heck I am usually all red and grumpy until about 8:00.
I do the band aid method too, and really just never thought to slow down.
Yesterday I tried removing the set more delicately than usual, no more than a few hours later I still got phantom burn. ha ha It's just one of those phenomenons :)
I wonder if ice first would numb it and keep the swelling down. Note to self bring ice upstairs for tomorrow.
Another note to self.... buy freezer to keep ice in so it does not melt.
ha ha No wonder your recipes consist of so little. Do you have a refrigerator?
You have swelling? I don't think that is normal. I don't have swelling and rarely have redness but I do get the burn.